a "sex offendor" in the White House ?

[Swagman]

A candidate's family should be exempt from a campaign but is there a special case to be considered when that candidate preaches morality ?



Bristol Palin became pregnant at the age of 17 ( a celebration of life) and the father of her child, Mr. Johnson is 18.( we do not know how long these 2 had been having sex )

In some states of the USA , California and Arizona, the father of Bristol's baby would have been convicted of a sex crime against a child, be branded a "peadophile" and forced to sign a "sex offendors register " for life. This would prevent he-and if he marries Bristol- both from a variety of normal daily activities-living within certain distances of schools, parks, swimming pools and churches. Mr Johnson woud be prevented from applying for a host of jobs where he may come into contact with children. He would be required to complete a form twice a year and if that form wasn't returned on the correct date he could be arrested and jailed.

Ms Palin and Mr Johnson may marry, have a tribe of kids and a happy marriage for the next 40 years..but for that lifetime he would be branded as a "sex offendor".

In other states, the law would look into the ages of the 2 when sexual acts took place. Imagine what sort of life these 2 and their children would have if Mr Johnson & Ms Palin had lived in Calfornia..probably a living hell.

Mr Johnson is clearly not a peadophile and what he and Bristol do is no-one's business. Luckily for them they live in Alaska and are within the law.

But that isn't the case for nearly 2 million other Americans.

[leftofcool]

1. If it is no one's business then why write this?

[cosmodem]

5. It used to be the RW doing this crap--now the Left is doing the same!

[Swagman]

9. Sarah Palin say she will "pray away homosexuality" . As a "christian"

I'd like to hear her views on "hate the sin love the sinner'. What does she think about the 2 million people who have been given cruel and unusual punishment by a permanent status of "sex offendor" ( and that includes people who relieve themselves beside the road and are arrested)

I know it's a touchy subjetc but why ?

[pnwmom]

2. Most sources say that she just turned 17, that she was 16 when she

became pregnant.

[varkam]

4. In some states 16 is the age of consent. eom

[cali]

50. nope. sorry. she turns 18 this month.

[cosmodem]

3. Lay off the crap and stop making Democrats look desperate -and stupid.

[An Intellectual]

23. You're a troll. :]

[Swagman]

27. and you dare to say "fight the fascist & libertarians" ?

go and read the history of Fascism and how it begins and don't lecture to me..

[An Intellectual]

37. It's fascist to point out obvious fasctist infiltrators?

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LisaL]

6. I doubt it. They are too close in age.

[Swagman]

7. I did and it's a legitimate subject -it's about the other 2 million !

[CoffeeCat]

8. You win the award...

...for shittiest post EVER on DU.

[Swagman]

10. and you win the award for the most blinkered. Obviously hysteria

isn't confined to those who engage in witch hunts..it's alive and well in politics.

[cosmodem]

57. agreed.

[mitchum]

11. Oops...I thought you meant Tawwwwd

yeah, the kid who knocked up Palin's daughter is seemingly a dumbass redneck, but he's not a sex offender

[Swagman]

32. he would be if they live in LA.

[Solly Mack]

12. This seems to be a subject you care a great deal about. As such

I feel it important to inform you that the word is pedophile and not "peadophile"

Also, it's offender and not "offendor".

I hope you have time to make the necessary edits. And while these changes may not boost the level of credibility of your post, they will make it easier to read it without thinking, "This is HUGH1!1!! I'm Series!!!" Not to cast asparagus, of course.

[Swagman]

19. Perhaps you don't agree with the Constitution:"cruel and unusual punishment".

petty stuff.. the word is mis-used in countless media outlets.

Spelling shouldn't affect credibilty. Either the subject is a legitimate one for discussion or isn't. I can see from the posts that it isn't and we may have regular viewers of "To Catch A Predator".

Perhaps you don't agree with the Constitution on "cruel and unusual punishment". I know it isn't a popular document these days.

[Solly Mack]

20. LOLOLOLOLOLOL Don't be such a peadophile, Swagman

Whatever the fuck that is

[Swagman]

24. glad you find it amusing. You must find the "sex offendor" kids banged

up in Texas and raped by their jailers a real hoot !

[Solly Mack]

26. I find your defensiveness amusing, yes.

And as evidenced by your escalating assumptions and accusations, your defensiveness is in full swing.

[Swagman]

29. sorry for defending my post against such vicious responses

next time I'll roll over. OK ?

and why are you reading this then..face it ..you couldn't resist sex offendor and White House in the same sentence could you ?

or do you just want a tennis match ?

[Solly Mack]

30. But you haven't been defending your post, Swagman.

You have been getting all defensive and making accusations.

lololololol

[Swagman]

31. no the point is proven: when it comes to the difficult subject of sex

the left is as hysterical as the right and all reason goes out the window and unfair laws will stand,Thus witch-hunts will abound as too many people don't want to face the reality of what is happening every day to hundeds of innocent people.

I don't have to defend my post because no-one is objecting to the subject..just that I dared to post, so they are attacking the poster.

I can defend myself because I am the one being attacked. You may find that unreasonable .I don't.

[Solly Mack]

34. To prove a point you need proof. In your OP, you make several statements

without any proof.

"In some states of the USA , California and Arizona,"

You offer no proof of this. You make a statement that you expect people take as fact.

"But that isn't the case for nearly 2 million other Americans."

Again, you offer up no evidence to prove this number.


The thing is, you could be 100% accurate in your statements, but you address an issue, one you obviously take very serious, and just expect people to accept your premise without any documentation. I agree that this is a very serious issue and one that deserves attention to details. Those details matter. Yet you offer none.

You offer up an example - Palin/Levy - as the basis for your primary point (the inequities of laws labeling people sex offenders when the circumstances aren't taken into account - and those circumstances matter).

Yet you offer up nothing in the way of proof that their actions would be treated as a crime in other states. Or that those labeled sex offenders in other states fall into those same circumstances as Palin/Levy.

Granted, I could have been nicer about the spelling of "peadophile". My apologies for that. Still, I did giggle when reading the word. And it did put me in the mind of "This is Hugh1!1!", etc.. Again, my apologies.

You continue to make wild accusations instead of proving your point, however.

In your latest round of wild accusations, you claim:

"the left is as hysterical as the right and all reason goes out the window and unfair laws will stand,Thus witch-hunts will abound as too many people don't want to face the reality of what is happening every day to hundeds of innocent people."

It can be said that making wild accusations is a sign of a hysterical person. (I'm not the one making wild accusations)

Calling the left hysterical and unthinking does not prove your point either...nor does it help your argument.

Claiming the left promotes "witch-hunts" isn't going to win you any points either. And that was your implication. The word "Thus" connotes a set condition (or conditions) lead to "witch-hunts". Those conditions were stated by you in the prior sentence.

[Swagman]

43. your'e gettting better..still attacking me but at least include the subject

If you want verified figures from government sources I'm happy to post links.If you think that all "sex offendors" are just dirty old men in raincoats then I shall supply the true facts. I don't think you want that though,

I think it's a subject that people would rather not talk about. If you cannot recognise the signs of a witch-hunt that is conducted by politicians scoring cheap points about law and order for election purpose, no matter who is hurt, and aided by a compliant media then that is sad.

The reaction on here is illuminating. Accusations of a "sex" nature DO work, no matter what the truth is.If you can give me reasons why the left and the right aren't perfectly happy to vilify one section of society ( and I'm not talking about a serial rapist here or a real child molestor)then I'll listen to your arguments.

If you want an argument about the way I am saying things or grammar then I'm not interested.

[Solly Mack]

44. LMAO You get a bone and still attack, make assumptions, and

offer up more accusations.

LMAO

[Swagman]

45. so it was really a tennis match you wanted

[Solly Mack]

49. Anything but backing up your statements?

Any accusation. Any assumption. Anything at all - except backing up your statements?

Is it just too hard to add the documentation? Just too hard to make a comparison of laws by actually proving what those laws are in the states named in your OP?

Then connecting your example, Palin/Levy, with the various laws in various states that would back up your concern about the inequities of such laws and the damage such inequities can produce?


You've offered nothing in the way of proof of your original point but have instead expected me to answer your straw man accusations and assumptions about my person (and not just mine).

I apologized for fucking with you over the spelling (and I freely admit to fucking with you over that) - and you still attack instead of addressing YOUR lack of facts.

Frankly, the point you were hoping to make might have been better served by using the case of Genarlow Wilson...but even then you would have needed supporting documentation.

I was wrong to fuck with you over the spelling - but that doesn't excuse your lack of supporting evidence in your OP, or your continued refusal to provide any. Nor does it justify your wild accusations.

Other posters within this thread have provided facts about California law that you should have provided to back up your statement.

You ought to thank them for doing so.

[cali]

51. your op is completely moronic

it's rank stupidity is why it's being attacked, dear.

[Blue_In_AK]

13. It is not the law here in Alaska.

See AS 11.41.434, .436, .438, and .440.
http://touchngo.com/lglcntr/akstats/Statutes/Title11/Chapter41.htm

Bristol and Levi don't fall into any of these categories. They were just a couple of kids screwing around without protection, and they got unlucky.

[Swagman]

21. well yes-that's the point. They got lucky but others don't

what's wrong with you people ?

You don't seem to believe any of the crap that comes out of right wing media like the Murdoch press but you are happy to just accept that 2 million fellow Americans are branded for life when the same media tells you they are "peadophile" "pedophiles" etc . That includes thousands of kids like these 2 who go onto marry and have a family but become 2nd class citizens.

Nothing like a bit if "sex" sensationalism to show who really are democratic.

[Blue_In_AK]

14. Is the law really that Draconian in California?

I find that hard to believe.

[LisaL]

15. I just looked it up. The age of consent is 18.

If the difference in age is less than 3 years, it would be misdemeanor.
So, if two 17 year old are having six, it's o'key. But once one of them turns 18, it's a crime (albeit a misdemeanor). Makes total sense, doesn't it?

[Blue_In_AK]

36. I like Alaska's laws better.

[Marie2]

48. It makes sense to me.

There are lots of guys in their 20s and up exploiting lots of girls in their early teens. We have psychological abuse, STDs, and pregnancies resulting. It should not be legal, IMO.

[LisaL]

54. What freaking sense does it make?

Two 17 year olds can be having sex, but the minute one turns 18 it's a crime?

[Withywindle]

16. Consensual sex between two teenagers a year apart is a crime in CA?

:wtf:


Even if it is, that's like picking on somebody for smoking pot. Technically illegal but geez.

[emilyg]

17. Not one bit interested.

[Swagman]

25. why did you read it then ? "sex offendor"/White House hooked you ?

[emilyg]

33. I was hoping it was about Bush.

[uppityperson]

18. "peadophile" ? One who loves peas?

1 yr apart in age, being 16/17 is legal to have sex. If they were several yrs apart, or younger it might be statutory rape, but nope, this is legal.

[Swagman]

22. go and read the laws again..peadophile / pedophile..you decide

[arthritisR_US]

35. your premise is quite a stretch, time to get real. n/t

[Swagman]

42. what "premise" is that ?

[arthritisR_US]

53. labelling the daughters doofus boyfriend a sex offender and speculating when they first had sex,

what a useless endeavor, IMO.

[elshiva]

38. eh, 17 and 18, what's the big deal?

:shrug: That's not pedophilia, she ain't a child, she probably only a couple months younger than him. Who cares?

[Swagman]

46. the ones who are in jail and are the same age-they care

as do their families and others like me. But don't let it bother your pretty little head.

[elshiva]

52. Fine, we all have more important things to worry about

than Palin's kid. Sorry, but I care more about her inexperience than what two teenagers did in bed together.

[The 12th Guru]

39. In Georgia, 12th grade boy got 10 yrs foer consensual oral sex by 10th grade girl

Read the story, very hard to swallow. no pun intended

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=Wilson
DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. -- There is a cardboard box in Genarlow Wilson's old bedroom.

It rests on the floor of his empty closet, near the deflated football and basketball. It's filled with things he needed in his old life. Mostly, it's overflowing with recruiting letters, from schools big and small. A "Good luck on the SAT" postcard from the coaches at Columbia. From another Ivy League college, Brown, a note from the football coach: "You have been recommended to me as one of the top scholar-athletes in your area."

There's a questionnaire from the Citadel. A brochure from Elon. An envelope from Sewanee. College after college, all wanting the undersized but overachieving Genarlow Wilson to consider their football programs. One open letter, dated three months before everything in this box became a reminder of a life derailed, invites him to take a campus visit. It begins:

Dear Genarlow,

Here you stand, on the threshold of four of the most influential, challenging, and rewarding years of your life.

Being Inmate No. 1187055
Genarlow Wilson is standing on a threshold all right, at the end of the last hall of Burruss Correctional Training Center, an hour and a half south of Atlanta. He's just a few feet from the mechanical door that closes with a goosebump-raising whurr and clang. Three and a half years after he received that letter, he's wearing a blue jacket with big, white block letters. They read: STATE PRISONER.

He's 20 now. Just two years into a 10-year sentence without possibility of parole, he peers through the thick glass and bars, trying to catch a glimpse of freedom. Outside, guard towers and rolls of coiled barbed wire remind him of who he is.

Once, he was the homecoming king at Douglas County High. Now he's Georgia inmate No. 1187055, convicted of aggravated child molestation.

When he was a senior in high school, he received oral sex from a 10th grader. He was 17. She was 15. Everyone, including the girl and the prosecution, agreed she initiated the act. But because of an archaic Georgia law, it was a misdemeanor for teenagers less than three years apart to have sexual intercourse, but a felony for the same kids to have oral sex.

Afterward, the state legislature changed the law to include an oral sex clause, but that doesn't help Wilson. In yet another baffling twist, the law was written to not apply to cases retroactively, though another legislative solution might be in the works. The case has drawn national condemnation, from the "Free Genarlow Wilson Now" editorial in The New York Times to a feature on Mark Cuban's HDNet.




read the rest, makes me sick to see our justice system do this to promising kid, this kind of crap isn't supposed to happen in America

[WillowTree]

40. "But that isn't the case for nearly 2 million other Americans"

Irrelevant. The various states are permitted by the Constitution to pass their own laws. And it is incumbent upon people to know and abide by the laws of whatever state they happen to be in at any given time.

Way back when in 1967, my family moved from California to Illinois. At that time there was no "right on red" provision in the Illinois traffic code. By your line of reasoning, I suppose, it would have been a gross injustice that all those (probably thousands) of right turns made at a red light after a complete stop in California would have made me a habitual traffic law violator if I had made them in the State of Illinois.

Under Alaska law, the age of consent is 16. The laws in other states are of absolutely no significance whatsoever in the matter of Bristol Palin and her boyfriend/fiancee/whatever unless you have some sort of concrete evidence that their child was conceived in a state other than Alaska. Which you don't. End of story.

PS. If you can't afford it on your own, consider asking Santa to bring you a grip for Christmas this year. You could stand to get one.

[Swagman]

41. OK-good-as we know everyone in jail is guilty . This subject

certainly raises the ire of people and they will find any way around discussing the rights and wrongs of whether people should be jailed and further and unfairly punished after they have done their sentence.

It's also about privilege and wealth and how the poor do not receive justice.

Not one person, including you, seems to have noted that I said Sarah Palin's daughter and prospective son-in-law are entirely innocent or that the anomolies in the law unfairly target one section of people but not others.

This post was deliberate as I wanted to gauge whether this subject could be discussed in a rational way. It can't be as the majority of posts are condemnations for me bringing it up.Talk about fascism..America is well on the road to it. You have a section of society villified for no other reason than it can be done. You do the work of fascists by silently agreeing with it.

A series of emotional posts that completely avoid the subject matter.

[LisaL]

56. It's very simple. What could be a felony or misdemeanor in one

state is perfectly legal in another. Get it?

[LisaL]

55. Very true.

Some states also made marriage between cousins a felony. While it's perfectly legal in other states and a lot of places around the world.
So, it's a moot point that if Bristol and her baby daddy were having sex in some other state, there could have been some sort of law broken.

[Marie2]

47. It is a misdemeanor in CA

Assuming the boy was 18 at the time of the sex, it would be a misdemeanor under California law, anyway.

If he was 17 at the time of the act, no charges as far as I know.

If guilty of a misdemeanor he would not have to register as a sex offender.

"(a) Unlawful sexual intercourse is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person who is not the spouse of the perpetrator, if the person is a minor. For the purposes of this section, a "minor" is a person under the age of 18 years and an "adult" is a person who is at least 18 years of age.

(b) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is not more than three years older or three years younger than the perpetrator, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

(c) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison.

(d) Any person 21 years of age or older who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is under 16 years of age is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years.